Eye eye

The first time you see the underwings of an Eyed Hawk moth, you understand just how effective their warning camouflage is likely to be so far as any predator is concerned. The sudden appearance of the eyes, either in full or partly hooded by the forewing, is an immense surprise compared with the dark - albeit very smart - livery of the moth in its standard resting position, shown in the picture below.

If you came on the insect from below, however, you would get a subtle hint that something more exciting lay in store - that slim line of pink just behind the leading edge of the finely-raked forewings looks promising:

The Eyed Hawk was not alone in the eggboxes. I spotted the greenish wing of a rather frayed Lime Hawk poking out from - appropriately - a green box, and then turned this over to find a bigger specimen in much better nick on the other side. Did they go for the box because it was green? I don't know and I suspect the literature is inconclusive, but I've often experienced black-and-white moths choosing to rest on the barcodes.  Most years, Lime Hawks have been the scarcest of the common species here, but they are doing very well this season.

In my blundering way, I misidentfied a Rustic Shoulder-knot the other day as a Light Brocade and Edward kindly put me right in Comments. We have been rewarded this morning for our virtue by an actual LB, and a RS-k came along as well, perhaps to emphasise the difference, which is indeed patent.

Light Brocade

Rustic Shoulder-knot

In a similar colourway, here is the year's first Bright-line Brown-eye (not to confused with the Brown-line Bright-eye which usually flies a little later in the year, thank goodness).  And then we have that good old regular making its 2020 debut, the Heart and Dart.  In the very early days of this blog, back in 2008, I was contacted by a soap firm in New York called Heart and Dart who were very excited to discover that they shared their name with a moth.

Finally, another of the partially pallid Muslins which have previously been unusual but seem to be quite frequent this year. And a micro whose ID I will sort out later because Penny needs the computer. I think its greenish hue is something the camera has come up with - as also to a lesser extent on the Heart and Dart - because both moths looked grey and brown to my eye, but we'll see when I go through the micro-moth Bible.

Oh, and very finally, moths had the rare excitement of making the main BBC Radio 4 news this morning because of a study of their role as pollinators.  More on that tomorrow.